The boy in Madam Malkin's
by leakywitch
Summary: They send their sons off for their first year at Hogwarts. And then Draco smiles at Harry, who finds himself having something of an epiphany.


One gentle quirk of the lips to the side. A soft look in the soft light of platform nine and three quarters. That's what Harry got from Draco Malfoy when nobody was looking.

He supposed it was the fact that they'd both just given their sons away to the trust of Hogwarts, at first. That old, happy place with so many old, happy memories, even if Harry and Draco had never shared one that had been simultaneously happy for both of them.

But there was something else. A connection Harry couldn't shake.

Harry had asked Ginny to marry him on a sunny day in autumn. It was many years ago now, but he still remembered it perfectly. She'd been delighted and unsurprised of course, and yet at the same time she'd still lit up and blushed like that ten-year-old Ginny Weasley that had first loved him.

And loved him and loved him and loved him until he'd asked her to marry her. She'd sighed, "oh, Harry..." like it was the first time she was saying his name. "Of course I'll marry you."

It wasn't that Draco had reminded Harry of the person he had been when Harry first met him – no, he had reminded Harry of Ginny.

The thing about Ginny was that she seemed to be in endless supply of laughter and smiles that were as bright as the burning summer sun, but in between those, in the quiet moments, she'd give Harry this look, this sigh of a smile, that he loved more than anything in the world. It was almost the same one that Ron gave to Hermione when she wasn't looking, or when her hair was looking particularly puffy on any given day, and it looked wholly alike to the one Arthur still gave Molly all these years later, too.

Harry didn't want to call it love.

His mind drummed it's fingers on that little smile as he watched Draco Malfoy's back as he walked away (no longer with a swagger, Harry noted), as he comforted Lily in her disappointment of having to stay at home instead of going to Hogwarts, as he drove them back in comfortable silence, as they ate dinner, as he lay in bed staring at the ceiling with Ginny snoring gently beside him. It wasn't love. It was more like...

Harry couldn't think of a word for it, and besides it didn't matter, because no matter what Harry labelled it as: love, trust, comfort, just _looking_ at somebody with all your edges stripped away... it wasn't something that he and Draco Malfoy could have between them. It wouldn't make any sense.

What in Gryffindor's name had it been, then?

He thought back to the stumbling young Ginny, putting her elbow in the butter because she was in the presence of Harry Potter. And then he thought back to the boy in Madam Malkin's.

_Hullo, Hogwarts too?_

Pale, pointy face. A strong reminder of Dudley. A lot of questions.

He'd made Harry feel really stupid. Brooms, Quidditch, Hogwarts, which house will you be in? Wouldn't you leave if you were in Hufflepuff? And he'd made Harry feel angry, too. Hagrid: a _savage, _a _servant._

_I really don't think they should let the other sort in, do you?_

Harry remembered something else Ginny had said to him. She'd thought he was asleep, Harry was sure. She'd whispered it into his ear as she lay beside him on their wedding night: "I loved you first."

It was a claim of possession in a way, a desperate way of saying _nobody can ever have loved you as much as I have. _It's something that needs to be said when you love someone that much, and Harry had just wished she knew that she said it every time she gave him his favourite look. _Even if they loved you, I loved you longest. I loved you _first.

As Harry drifted away into sleep, an old memory of a boy in Madam Malkin's replayed in his mind. A pale, pointy face. Dudley. A lot of questions. Shame. Anger. A pale, pointy face. Dudley. A lot of questions. Curiosity. Prejudice. A pale, pointy face. A showing off of parents and good fortune. A lot of questions. Curiosity. A check on Harry's parentage. A pale, pointy face. Showing off. A lot of questions. A search for a common connection. You're one of our kind, aren't you?

A pale, pointy face, looking at a shabby boy with round glasses and a scar concealed by a badly cut fringe. A causal facade. A million questions. Searching for a common connection with a boy he's never met. A boy in Muggle clothing. Draco must have known. _Well, I'll see you at Hogwarts, I suppose._

A pale, pointy face.

"_Training for the ballet, Potter?"_

"_Hey, Potter! __Potter!__ How's your head? You feeling all right? Sure you're not going to go berserk on us?"_

"_Sure you can manage that broom, Potter?"_

"_Scared, Potter?"_

"_Crucio!"_

A _sectumsempra _echoed in Harry's mind too, and suddenly there was blood everywhere –

"_I can't – I can't be sure..."_

"_Don't kill him! DON'T KILL HIM!"_

"_Hullo, Hogwarts too?"_

It had taken Harry a quarter of a century plus a year, a month and a day to work it out. In a smile given warmly into cool September, it had shown. Draco Malfoy had loved him from the start.


End file.
